It is a crime that the contractor is getting paid to fix the mistakes it made in the first place. In addition, building a site with virtually no security is ridiculous. Who does that? And the contractors used should have known better. Some of the IT players are not small names. The management from the HHS team was lacking as well. There is little that is good about the site.

What would I do? Take it off grid. Tell the contractor(s) they face a lawsuit if this is not cleaned up in 6 months. Extend the ACA deadline. Appoint someone new to oversee the project from the administrations inner circle, who has a tech advisor. Within 3 months, limited rollout, say within a geographic region. Grow as you go.

As InformationWeek Government readers were busy firming up their fiscal year 2015 budgets, we asked them to rate more than 30 IT initiatives in terms of importance and current leadership focus. No surprise, among more than 30 options, security is No. 1. After that, things get less predictable.